Increasingly stringent pollution control standards for acid gases and trace air toxics, including hydrochloric acid (HCl), sulfur trioxide (SO3), and mercury (Hg), pose greater challenges for industries. Current best control practices for sorbent pollution control processes, such as activated carbon injection (ACI) and dry sorbent injection (DSI), must be improved. In many cases, a further increase in sorbent injection rate is uneconomical, ineffective, and/or otherwise adversely impacts the waste gas treatment process.
The operational performance of a coal fired power plant and contaminant emission levels is dependent on the type of coal the plant burns. It is well known that discrete coal seams have different qualities and composition. However, even within a coal seam, variability of certain characteristics (without limitation: heating value, mercury, sulfur, chlorine or other halogens, etc.) can be large enough to have a measureable impact on plant performance and contaminate emissions.
In attempting to optimize plant performance, predictive technologies can be utilized to estimate desired parameters, such as mercury or other emissions, or heat rate. Variability in the coal source imposes performance limitations on predictive technologies.